Sunday, April 26, 2009

The Jennerator is still fermenting...It's been a while - but no worries...

Shawn and I saw the movie Beer Wars - it was pretty good...but made me depressed about opening a brewery. It takes a ton of money and is really difficult. What a big surprise!

Anyway - at one point in the movie, they went to a bar and asked people what beer they drank. Most people said Bud, Miller, or Coors. Then they asked them if they thought they could tell which was which in a blind taste test. Everybody thought they could. BUT nobody could tell the difference.

That led me to want to see if me and my friends could tell the difference. We got bottles of Bud Light, cans of Miller Lite, and bottles of Coors Light. Basically, it was almost impossible for me to tell them apart. I did correctly identify Coors, based mainly on color. It looked the lightest to me. I could not tell them apart based on taste at all. Jenn didn't get any right. My one friend got them all right! She said they smelled different to her. My other friend got 1 right too.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The Jennerator is doing well...still bubbling slowly away - the recipe I have said primary fermentation would take 2 weeks. It was 2 weeks on Sunday and it is still going...not a big deal - the beer tells you when its ready - not the other way around. Probably another week or two - then rack to secondary. This will take 3-4 weeks and is done to condition and "lager" the beer.

I spoke with the owner of Heater Allen Brewery this morning. He was very helpful and I learned a lot. Mainly that I have a long way to go and really know nothing about brewing on a commercial scale...but it was fun. I gave him a bottle of Mustang Sally as a thank you - he seemed to get a kick out of the name. I bought 2 bottles of his doppelbock and am looking forward to trying them.